We finally did it! Today we carried the Flag and ran the entire Boston Marathon and showed the flag to everyone!
Here is a detailed account. First, allow me to apologize for my grammar mistakes. I make a lot mistakes when I am really tired and I am really tired now. However, I am very excited. So I will write the detailed account in random order and attempt to fix things later.
My mother dropped Dan, Ian and me off at Hopkinton this morning. We waited in a football field, the athletic village, 7/10 mile from the starting line. The weather was bad but not as bad as it was predicted. The first three hours of waiting is the worse. It rained heavily and we hide under the bleacher of the football field. I had a poncho. Dan and Ian used large trash bags as their rain gear. Rain stopped about 10:30 but our shoes were already wet from walking around earlier.
Phil and his friend from MIT joined us. Phil is a sophomore Chemical Engineer at MIT. We started as a five person group.
We crossed the starting line at about 10:45am. 5 minutes into the race, I had a flag malfunction. The wooden part of the flag pole was in the rain the entire morning. It was soaked with water and puffed up. I had a hard to time connect the wooden part to the PVC part of the flag. The connection I made initially wasn’t deep enough for the strong wind. The top of the wooden part broke off. I was able to use the other end of the stick and continue running with the flag.
I carried the flag for the 1st mile. Phil took over for the 2nd and 3rd mile. We were on a slower pace than Phil and his friend so they took off after the 3rd mile.
We stayed on pace well. We were on 8'45 to 9'15 min/mile pace for the first 6 miles, then we were on 9'20 to 10 min per mile pace for mile 7 to mile 18. The rest was 10 to 11 mins per mile pace with 2x 12 mins miles.
Many friends came out cheering for us. Thanks guys!
Dan’s knee was hurting (from knee injury) at mile 5 or earlier. He still finished! He is one tough guy. I hope he recovers soon. Ian’s legs were hurting on mile 10 but we keep the pace we wanted. Â
Some Anecdotes:
Many people from work came to cheer for us and made the first video of the flag.
One lady run up to me and told me that she saw me training all winter with the flag and she deeply appreciates that I am running with the flag today.
Two people say recognize me from the MIT home page. (probably more but I only heard two.
Thanks for every cheered for us!
Liyan
Marathon Day Video